10 ms·

Stupid Apple - I blame Schiller. They won’t support 32Gb ram because it might decrease battery life and requires them to reengineer the logic board but they’re

by jarym 8y ago

Stupid Apple - I blame Schiller. They won’t support 32Gb ram because it might decrease battery life and requires them to reengineer the logic board but they’re totally cool with a fragile ass keyboard GLUED to a battery! Really there’s no way to call this anything other than insanity. I remember the media used to talk about the ‘halo effect’ - well I’m someone who has Almost every MBP between 2002-2012 and every iPhone until the 7 plus.... right now I doubt they’ll make a real pro laptop and so I’m likely gonna switch to a Dell XPS. /end frustration

girvo 8y ago
I thought the RAM thing would decrease battery life, because it requires a different intel chipset — as shown by the contemporary laptops from other manufacturers with the same CPUs and chipset topping out at 16GB as well? I could be misremembering, and it frustrates me either way, but I was certain that Intel also held some blame for this?
- kbumsik 8y ago
  Dell XPS has up to 32GB with the exactly same CPU.
  - stephenr 8y ago
    And it won’t be using low power memory modules. That’s the trade off.
    - mort96 8y ago
      Maybe, if their MacBook Pros were just a little bit thicker (say, the thickness of the 2013-2015 models), they'd be able to fit a big enough battery for the extra power draw to not matter too much?
      - jpalomaki 8y ago
        "Considering that a 76 watt-hour battery is used in the 15 inch machines, they could have made the battery 30% bigger to hit the ceiling imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration, and they still wouldn’t have had the same battery life as they do now by using LPDDR memory." [1] [1] https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/ https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/
- nvivo 8y ago
  I find it hard to believe that any decent chipset made in the last decade at least cannot support 32gb of ram. I had a reasonably cheap samsung laptop from 2012 that already did. If apple is not doing it, it's not by the lack of choices in the market.
  - simonh 8y ago
    Of course, but it's a tradeoff. These low power low profile Intel CPUs can support more memory, but only DDR4 which is desktop class RAM with more than double the power requirements in use, and four to ten times the power usage in sleep mode. The logic board would also have the redesigned and bigger for the new chipset, putting pressure on battery space. You see Microsoft making the same choice as Apple with the new Surface laptop. Fortunately Intel are launching new mobile chips with support for fast, low power LPDDR3E memory over 16GB this year. https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/ https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/
- kayoone 8y ago
  I think the reason is LPDDR3 which only goes up to 16GB with Intels chipsets, they would need to use Desktop class ram to go above which uses a lot more power. [1] https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/ https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/
- Theodores 8y ago
  You are correct, I bought an Intel NUC with an i7 in it and that had the 16Gb limit. Furthermore, it only had two cores and hyperthreading whereas I was 'used to' i7 having four proper cores and HT. I wanted to have a desktop that I could leave on without it taking lots of power (CO2 matters) or needing a wind-tunnel grade fan to keep it cool (noise matters). So it had some variant of what Apple used. In my opinion this CPU was a dud, I had to upgrade the BIOS numerous times and it wasn't any quicker than my elderly i5 powered laptop. Plus it wasn't as silent as hoped: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/nuc/kits/nuc5i7ryh.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits... Apple used the same RAM limited CPU in 2015: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/G0QP3LL/A/refurbished-133-inch-macbook-pro-27ghz-dual-core-intel-i7-with-retina-display https://www.apple.com/shop/product/G0QP3LL/A/refurbished-133... The subsequent products with the useless keyboard were to use iterations of this lemon of a CPU. My Intel NUC is actually in a drawer unused. I had lost a couple of keys on the elderly i5 laptop, I bought a new backlit keyboard for that on ebay, it came from China in an incredible 3 days and cost ~£50 including shipping. This is the keyboard I am using right now. It actually looks super cool as the laptop was originally all in silver, the replacement keyboard and surround is black and the design looks so good because the mousepad is still silver coloured. It looks like a high end German product due to that colourway combo.
kanishkdudeja 8y ago
The Dell XPS 13 has been a solid work machine for me. Portable, powerful, comes with USB Type A and C ports, Thunderbolt 3 and comes with one of the best keyboards in laptops.
- robinduckett 8y ago
  The XPS 15 is a bit better, I got one from last year for about the same price as my 13
- kayoone 8y ago
  do you run Windows or Linux on it ?
  - kiksy 8y ago
    Big fan of the XPS 13. I bought the developer Linux edition first, which had a 1080p (boo!) screen and matte finish (yeah!). It had an issue where the trackpad would just intermittently stop working or the cursor would just zoom around the screen, making it unusable. Dell sent out an engineer THE NEXT DAY TO MY HOUSE with a replacement trackpad. Insane customer support. I ended up swapping it for a Windows version for the same price but with the higher res screen (but gloss) as the HDMI out didn't work on the Linux version. I think this was software rather than hardware.
  - kanishkdudeja 8y ago
    Ubuntu 18.04 :)
- fg_my_pw_again 8y ago
  Well, the XPS13 has had its share of keyboard problems too: https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-13-9370-Keyboard-Skips-Button-Presses/td-p/5835431 https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-13-9370-Keyboard-Skip... It took months for a BIOS release to make the keyboard workable. Now if only they could get the webcam to work..
hpaavola 8y ago
I think I read one comment here on HN some time ago about the lack of >16GB RAM on laptops. The reason was that DDR3 maxes out at 16GB and DDR4 which allows much higher amount of RAM lacks the low power requirements while sleeping. So one would pretty much sacrifice sleeping in order to get more RAM.
doktrin 8y ago
I couldn't agree more. The new MBPs are basically lemons. Mine absolutely is, and is unusable and sent out for repairs after only 1 year (defects include but are definitely not limited to this ultra brittle keyboard). I will definitely not buy another one of these awful machines. What ever was the point of making this thing razer thin? What bizarre, mythical user did they have in mind that just couldn't stand a few cm of extra 'bulk'? None of this makes any sense, except it being a case of design driven engineering run amok.
m_st 8y ago
Apple (MBP15 late 2013, iMac 27 late 2009) user at home, Dell XPS 15 9550 (2015) user at work here. While I totally agree with you about the new MBP, please just know that the XPS 15 isn't without it's problems too! It must just be that Windows users are more used to lower quality hardware/software that such things are accepted... I really like my XPS 15 as it is fast and as compact as a MBP, but: - Microsoft Surface Bluetooth mouse and keyboard don't work anymore after an idle period of maybe 10 minutes. Have to disable/enable Bluetooth to get it working again. I reverted to RF dongle keyboard and use the Surface Mouse with the included USB cable. - I had a huge number of BSOD early on. It's still not perfect, but almost fine now. - The web cam is at the worst possible position. It films your fingers and breast, rather than head! - The microphone is even worse, no one will hear you talking. - Headphone with microphone works fine. But after unplugging I don't have any sound anymore. Sleep/wake fixes it... - I obviously do miss some of the Mac apps like OmniFocus, Pixelmator, xScope and others while working in Windows.
- sharpshadow 8y ago
  There is a XPS Developer Edition with Linux instead of Microsoft. I'm personally stuck with Win 7. Will never update to Win 10 and OSX does not seem to be a good choice nowadays. That means Linux will make the run the next years, hopefully.
  - sh4z 8y ago
    Personally I like to just get the Windows version and load Linux with GRUB as a second boot option. The few times I need to do something on Windows (photo editing, some games) I just reboot.
    - rbanffy 8y ago
      I end up doing almost the same except that I ditch the Windows install. The hardware selection is much better and, unless you intentionally sabotage yourself, they work every bit as well as laptops that come with factory-supported Linux installs.
    - 8y ago
eecc 8y ago
Technically no, not exactly. It’s intel’s fault. Their damn architectures won’t support DDR4LP - that’s the low power variant - because they’ve become complacent. Also the lack of PCIe lanes forced Apples’s hand on USBc only design, although it’s such a daft choice they should’ve just gone with 2 TB ports and keep the other “legacy” available. But no, they had to brag about dual 4K external monitors to it had to be 4 USBc ports and nothing else. I’m seriously worried that the platform I’ve been so comfortable with the past 10 years will fall in disrepair because of some ill-advised management that chose to chase some other innovation... It’s another problem I don’t need
- mamon 8y ago
  There's a simple solution for the lack of DDR4LP: end the "thinner and lighter" insanity and provide normal DDR4 with a decent battery capacity by making the laptop 2mm thicker and 0.5 pound heavier.
  - acdha 8y ago
    I’d cut Apple some slack on the RAM front because Intel was supposed to ship DDR4LP a couple years ago, after years of being fairly good about hitting targets. The larger point about recognizing that we’ve plateaued on size & weight benefits is important, though. As long as we need keyboards there’s not much point in taking on all of the other compromises.
    - mamon 8y ago
      Ironically, it was Steve Jobs' pep talk to new executives that went something like: "The difference between a janitor and executive is that VPs are not allowed to have excuses". So trying to share the blame with Intel is just silly. Every single Apple's competitor delivers laptops with 32+ GB of RAM, and MacBooks are stuck at 16GB and there's no one to blame for it but Apple.
      - masklinn 8y ago
        > Every single Apple's competitor delivers laptops with 32+ GB of RAM, and MacBooks are stuck at 16GB and there's no one to blame for it but Apple. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Book_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Book_2
garganzol 8y ago
At same boat as you, and just have migrated all my activities to Windows on 64 Gb Core i7 8 gen CPU desktop. It's a real booster for my day to day work. I love and miss the aesthetics of macOS and Magic Mouse swipes. However let's face it, Apple alone cannot stand the pace. It just cannot compete with hordes of companies from all over the world who do their part of job really really good. Gigabyte, ASUS, Samsung, Intel, Crucial, NVidia, AMD, Dell to name a few plus many other small and big suppliers vs Apple Goliath. Battle result is predetermined by the forces of nature. Apple gonna lose in the long run.
- isostatic 8y ago
  We all lose in the long run. Those companies all existed in 2005, but Apple was streets ahead of them for the average person. Apple pushed the industry forward. Remember what the typical phone was like before the iphone? Or the typical mp3 player before the ipod? Sure, the ipod may have had less space than a Nomad and no wifi, but it was what people actually wanted. The question is, is apple really going backwards, or is it a case of "I don't like change". The longer you use something, the more you don't like anything different. Is USB-C really a step back from magsafe? Is removing the function keys really a step back? How about removing 3.5mm jacks from a phone? I've used /etc/network/interfaces to configure my network for 2 decades. Netplan is thus stupid and terrible. Except if I look at it objectively netplan is better. It deprecates those nice comfy hacks and configs I don't even think about, so of course I don't like it. My local hifi shop tell me that the bose qc35s jumped off the shelves like hotcakes compared with the 25s, because they were wireless and rechargable. I don't like them because I like 3.5mm. But as the man said: Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty- five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
  - garganzol 8y ago
    Apple is really going backwards, no doubt in that. It still has a lot of momentum though but it's been mostly downhill since Steve Jobs unfortunate departure.
lmm 8y ago
I've been very happy with my Surface Book, FWIW - as beautiful as it is powerful, though with a price to match. (But there are plenty of good options these days - I've heard good things about the XPS too, though personally I didn't like the feel of the keyboard).
bhnmmhmd 8y ago
I mostly agree with you. But really, who needs +16GB RAM on their laptop?! I think the need for more RAM is correlated with the need for more CPU clock, more powerful graphic card, and a better Motherboard, all of which result in a huge decrease in battery life (which is supposed to be a laptop's main strength over heavy, power-consuming PC).
- nomel 8y ago
  For me, large datasets used for analytics. I don’t want to use a desktop, I want to do this stuff in a coffee shop, and in my hotel. The difference between in-memory and disk based operations is, understandably, very significant.
- lordfoom 8y ago
  I would think most developers would like at least 16gb
- sancha_ 8y ago
  I was about to buy a new MBP this year but held back because I already have 16GB of RAM and want more, actually need more. I often have the problem that my current MBP runs out of memory and when this happends it costs me like 30 to 60 minutes to get back to the point where I was when it ran out of it. So yeah, there are some of us that need more RAM.
- zero_intp 8y ago
  I need the RAM. Network modeling, network simulation, dev installations of SDN platforms. This is a developer and programmer forum, right?
  - scruffyherder 8y ago
    It's the reason I end up always looking at gaming laptops. I don't really need a GPU at all, it's nice but not needed. However yeah, Cores & RAM that's what I need.
- lmm 8y ago
  As a developer, I need a machine that's powerful enough to develop on; being light and having battery life is a nice-to-have but not essential. If that means I have to buy a bulky gaming laptop rather than a sleek portable one, that's what I'll do. At the moment I can just about manage with 16GB, but it's definitely the limiting factor on my current machine (surface book 2, which is capable of some pretty good gaming).
ngcazz 8y ago
The Apple I want figures out how you put 32GB RAM in a thin laptop while preserving battery life!
- rbanffy 8y ago
  They could, in theory, have a "power saving" mode that tries to consolidate as much as it can into as few memory modules as possible (I'm currently using about 39% of memory, the rest being free and cache), virtual addresses would remain untouched and only physical addresses would change after a move and then it'd be possible to power down the memory modules that are not being used (PCIe-attached storage is slower than memory, but fast and power saving don't go together that well)
  - eptcyka 8y ago
    OSX is already proactively compressing memory in the background, if it deems a process worthy of compression.
    - rbanffy 8y ago
      Isn't it compressing caches only?
- bpicolo 8y ago
  Probably would help if they freed up space and battery life by not having a totally unnecessary second screen taking up the top row of the keyboard.
  - donarb 8y ago
    And replace it with what, function keys? Keys which are thicker than the screen that replaced them and has far more functionality in a smaller footprint?
roadnottaken 8y ago
For what it's worth, the keyboard and trackpad both keep breaking on my XPS 15 :/
- m_st 8y ago
  My trackpad broke too, because the battery was inflating and pushed it out of the case... Got a free replacement though.
csomar 8y ago
The reason I'm sticking to the Macbook is that despite these issues they are still way ahead of any competition. I'm running a mid-2014 retina. It is still way better than anything Dell, Lenovo, Asus, etc.. can get me. 4 years later and the battery still get me a solid 5-6 hours despite strong usage. But here is the following: Apple is really improving. It is just not meeting the expectations of its demanding users (and rightly so since we are paying a premium for Apple hardware). I remember getting sick of macOS Sierra and decided to rollback to Mavericks. Holly crap, I then just realized how much more polished Sierra is with all its issues. The external screen resolutions were screwed, can no longer answer calls through my mac, notes no longer sync and a dozen other things that I just "assumed". These advances are probably building technical debt. But also they are what attaching people to the Apple ecosystem. I get my airpods connected to my iPhone easily and without issues. Then I quickly switch the input to my Mac. Then back to my iPhone. Good luck getting that to work correctly on Windows software and other hardware.
acranox 8y ago
Did you buy your previous MBPs because they are nice kit, or because of Mac OS X? Are you switching to a Dell, or switching to Windows or Linux? If your work or personal use can so freely change Operating Systems, then, I guess I consider you lucky. I can't really do my job from a Windows box without significant pain. I could probably use Linux, but it would add some additional frustration.

by jarym 8y ago

girvo 8y ago

I thought the RAM thing would decrease battery life, because it requires a different intel chipset — as shown by the contemporary laptops from other manufacturers with the same CPUs and chipset topping out at 16GB as well? I could be misremembering, and it frustrates me either way, but I was certain that Intel also held some blame for this?

kbumsik 8y ago
Dell XPS has up to 32GB with the exactly same CPU.
- stephenr 8y ago
  And it won’t be using low power memory modules. That’s the trade off.
  - mort96 8y ago
    Maybe, if their MacBook Pros were just a little bit thicker (say, the thickness of the 2013-2015 models), they'd be able to fit a big enough battery for the extra power draw to not matter too much?
    - jpalomaki 8y ago
      "Considering that a 76 watt-hour battery is used in the 15 inch machines, they could have made the battery 30% bigger to hit the ceiling imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration, and they still wouldn’t have had the same battery life as they do now by using LPDDR memory." [1] [1] https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/ https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/
nvivo 8y ago
I find it hard to believe that any decent chipset made in the last decade at least cannot support 32gb of ram. I had a reasonably cheap samsung laptop from 2012 that already did. If apple is not doing it, it's not by the lack of choices in the market.
- simonh 8y ago
  Of course, but it's a tradeoff. These low power low profile Intel CPUs can support more memory, but only DDR4 which is desktop class RAM with more than double the power requirements in use, and four to ten times the power usage in sleep mode. The logic board would also have the redesigned and bigger for the new chipset, putting pressure on battery space. You see Microsoft making the same choice as Apple with the new Surface laptop. Fortunately Intel are launching new mobile chips with support for fast, low power LPDDR3E memory over 16GB this year. https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/ https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/
kayoone 8y ago
I think the reason is LPDDR3 which only goes up to 16GB with Intels chipsets, they would need to use Desktop class ram to go above which uses a lot more power. [1] https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/ https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/
Theodores 8y ago
You are correct, I bought an Intel NUC with an i7 in it and that had the 16Gb limit. Furthermore, it only had two cores and hyperthreading whereas I was 'used to' i7 having four proper cores and HT. I wanted to have a desktop that I could leave on without it taking lots of power (CO2 matters) or needing a wind-tunnel grade fan to keep it cool (noise matters). So it had some variant of what Apple used. In my opinion this CPU was a dud, I had to upgrade the BIOS numerous times and it wasn't any quicker than my elderly i5 powered laptop. Plus it wasn't as silent as hoped: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/nuc/kits/nuc5i7ryh.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits... Apple used the same RAM limited CPU in 2015: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/G0QP3LL/A/refurbished-133-inch-macbook-pro-27ghz-dual-core-intel-i7-with-retina-display https://www.apple.com/shop/product/G0QP3LL/A/refurbished-133... The subsequent products with the useless keyboard were to use iterations of this lemon of a CPU. My Intel NUC is actually in a drawer unused. I had lost a couple of keys on the elderly i5 laptop, I bought a new backlit keyboard for that on ebay, it came from China in an incredible 3 days and cost ~£50 including shipping. This is the keyboard I am using right now. It actually looks super cool as the laptop was originally all in silver, the replacement keyboard and surround is black and the design looks so good because the mousepad is still silver coloured. It looks like a high end German product due to that colourway combo.

kanishkdudeja 8y ago

The Dell XPS 13 has been a solid work machine for me. Portable, powerful, comes with USB Type A and C ports, Thunderbolt 3 and comes with one of the best keyboards in laptops.

robinduckett 8y ago
The XPS 15 is a bit better, I got one from last year for about the same price as my 13
kayoone 8y ago
do you run Windows or Linux on it ?
- kiksy 8y ago
  Big fan of the XPS 13. I bought the developer Linux edition first, which had a 1080p (boo!) screen and matte finish (yeah!). It had an issue where the trackpad would just intermittently stop working or the cursor would just zoom around the screen, making it unusable. Dell sent out an engineer THE NEXT DAY TO MY HOUSE with a replacement trackpad. Insane customer support. I ended up swapping it for a Windows version for the same price but with the higher res screen (but gloss) as the HDMI out didn't work on the Linux version. I think this was software rather than hardware.
- kanishkdudeja 8y ago
  Ubuntu 18.04 :)
fg_my_pw_again 8y ago
Well, the XPS13 has had its share of keyboard problems too: https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-13-9370-Keyboard-Skips-Button-Presses/td-p/5835431 https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-13-9370-Keyboard-Skip... It took months for a BIOS release to make the keyboard workable. Now if only they could get the webcam to work..

hpaavola 8y ago

I think I read one comment here on HN some time ago about the lack of >16GB RAM on laptops. The reason was that DDR3 maxes out at 16GB and DDR4 which allows much higher amount of RAM lacks the low power requirements while sleeping. So one would pretty much sacrifice sleeping in order to get more RAM.

doktrin 8y ago

I couldn't agree more. The new MBPs are basically lemons. Mine absolutely is, and is unusable and sent out for repairs after only 1 year (defects include but are definitely not limited to this ultra brittle keyboard). I will definitely not buy another one of these awful machines. What ever was the point of making this thing razer thin? What bizarre, mythical user did they have in mind that just couldn't stand a few cm of extra 'bulk'? None of this makes any sense, except it being a case of design driven engineering run amok.

m_st 8y ago

Apple (MBP15 late 2013, iMac 27 late 2009) user at home, Dell XPS 15 9550 (2015) user at work here. While I totally agree with you about the new MBP, please just know that the XPS 15 isn't without it's problems too! It must just be that Windows users are more used to lower quality hardware/software that such things are accepted... I really like my XPS 15 as it is fast and as compact as a MBP, but: - Microsoft Surface Bluetooth mouse and keyboard don't work anymore after an idle period of maybe 10 minutes. Have to disable/enable Bluetooth to get it working again. I reverted to RF dongle keyboard and use the Surface Mouse with the included USB cable. - I had a huge number of BSOD early on. It's still not perfect, but almost fine now. - The web cam is at the worst possible position. It films your fingers and breast, rather than head! - The microphone is even worse, no one will hear you talking. - Headphone with microphone works fine. But after unplugging I don't have any sound anymore. Sleep/wake fixes it... - I obviously do miss some of the Mac apps like OmniFocus, Pixelmator, xScope and others while working in Windows.

sharpshadow 8y ago
There is a XPS Developer Edition with Linux instead of Microsoft. I'm personally stuck with Win 7. Will never update to Win 10 and OSX does not seem to be a good choice nowadays. That means Linux will make the run the next years, hopefully.
- sh4z 8y ago
  Personally I like to just get the Windows version and load Linux with GRUB as a second boot option. The few times I need to do something on Windows (photo editing, some games) I just reboot.
  - rbanffy 8y ago
    I end up doing almost the same except that I ditch the Windows install. The hardware selection is much better and, unless you intentionally sabotage yourself, they work every bit as well as laptops that come with factory-supported Linux installs.
  - 8y ago

eecc 8y ago

Technically no, not exactly. It’s intel’s fault. Their damn architectures won’t support DDR4LP - that’s the low power variant - because they’ve become complacent. Also the lack of PCIe lanes forced Apples’s hand on USBc only design, although it’s such a daft choice they should’ve just gone with 2 TB ports and keep the other “legacy” available. But no, they had to brag about dual 4K external monitors to it had to be 4 USBc ports and nothing else. I’m seriously worried that the platform I’ve been so comfortable with the past 10 years will fall in disrepair because of some ill-advised management that chose to chase some other innovation... It’s another problem I don’t need

mamon 8y ago
There's a simple solution for the lack of DDR4LP: end the "thinner and lighter" insanity and provide normal DDR4 with a decent battery capacity by making the laptop 2mm thicker and 0.5 pound heavier.
- acdha 8y ago
  I’d cut Apple some slack on the RAM front because Intel was supposed to ship DDR4LP a couple years ago, after years of being fairly good about hitting targets. The larger point about recognizing that we’ve plateaued on size & weight benefits is important, though. As long as we need keyboards there’s not much point in taking on all of the other compromises.
  - mamon 8y ago
    Ironically, it was Steve Jobs' pep talk to new executives that went something like: "The difference between a janitor and executive is that VPs are not allowed to have excuses". So trying to share the blame with Intel is just silly. Every single Apple's competitor delivers laptops with 32+ GB of RAM, and MacBooks are stuck at 16GB and there's no one to blame for it but Apple.
    - masklinn 8y ago
      > Every single Apple's competitor delivers laptops with 32+ GB of RAM, and MacBooks are stuck at 16GB and there's no one to blame for it but Apple. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Book_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Book_2

garganzol 8y ago

At same boat as you, and just have migrated all my activities to Windows on 64 Gb Core i7 8 gen CPU desktop. It's a real booster for my day to day work. I love and miss the aesthetics of macOS and Magic Mouse swipes. However let's face it, Apple alone cannot stand the pace. It just cannot compete with hordes of companies from all over the world who do their part of job really really good. Gigabyte, ASUS, Samsung, Intel, Crucial, NVidia, AMD, Dell to name a few plus many other small and big suppliers vs Apple Goliath. Battle result is predetermined by the forces of nature. Apple gonna lose in the long run.

isostatic 8y ago
We all lose in the long run. Those companies all existed in 2005, but Apple was streets ahead of them for the average person. Apple pushed the industry forward. Remember what the typical phone was like before the iphone? Or the typical mp3 player before the ipod? Sure, the ipod may have had less space than a Nomad and no wifi, but it was what people actually wanted. The question is, is apple really going backwards, or is it a case of "I don't like change". The longer you use something, the more you don't like anything different. Is USB-C really a step back from magsafe? Is removing the function keys really a step back? How about removing 3.5mm jacks from a phone? I've used /etc/network/interfaces to configure my network for 2 decades. Netplan is thus stupid and terrible. Except if I look at it objectively netplan is better. It deprecates those nice comfy hacks and configs I don't even think about, so of course I don't like it. My local hifi shop tell me that the bose qc35s jumped off the shelves like hotcakes compared with the 25s, because they were wireless and rechargable. I don't like them because I like 3.5mm. But as the man said: Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty- five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
- garganzol 8y ago
  Apple is really going backwards, no doubt in that. It still has a lot of momentum though but it's been mostly downhill since Steve Jobs unfortunate departure.

lmm 8y ago

I've been very happy with my Surface Book, FWIW - as beautiful as it is powerful, though with a price to match. (But there are plenty of good options these days - I've heard good things about the XPS too, though personally I didn't like the feel of the keyboard).

bhnmmhmd 8y ago

I mostly agree with you. But really, who needs +16GB RAM on their laptop?! I think the need for more RAM is correlated with the need for more CPU clock, more powerful graphic card, and a better Motherboard, all of which result in a huge decrease in battery life (which is supposed to be a laptop's main strength over heavy, power-consuming PC).

nomel 8y ago
For me, large datasets used for analytics. I don’t want to use a desktop, I want to do this stuff in a coffee shop, and in my hotel. The difference between in-memory and disk based operations is, understandably, very significant.
lordfoom 8y ago
I would think most developers would like at least 16gb
sancha_ 8y ago
I was about to buy a new MBP this year but held back because I already have 16GB of RAM and want more, actually need more. I often have the problem that my current MBP runs out of memory and when this happends it costs me like 30 to 60 minutes to get back to the point where I was when it ran out of it. So yeah, there are some of us that need more RAM.
zero_intp 8y ago
I need the RAM. Network modeling, network simulation, dev installations of SDN platforms. This is a developer and programmer forum, right?
- scruffyherder 8y ago
  It's the reason I end up always looking at gaming laptops. I don't really need a GPU at all, it's nice but not needed. However yeah, Cores & RAM that's what I need.
lmm 8y ago
As a developer, I need a machine that's powerful enough to develop on; being light and having battery life is a nice-to-have but not essential. If that means I have to buy a bulky gaming laptop rather than a sleek portable one, that's what I'll do. At the moment I can just about manage with 16GB, but it's definitely the limiting factor on my current machine (surface book 2, which is capable of some pretty good gaming).

ngcazz 8y ago

The Apple I want figures out how you put 32GB RAM in a thin laptop while preserving battery life!

rbanffy 8y ago
They could, in theory, have a "power saving" mode that tries to consolidate as much as it can into as few memory modules as possible (I'm currently using about 39% of memory, the rest being free and cache), virtual addresses would remain untouched and only physical addresses would change after a move and then it'd be possible to power down the memory modules that are not being used (PCIe-attached storage is slower than memory, but fast and power saving don't go together that well)
- eptcyka 8y ago
  OSX is already proactively compressing memory in the background, if it deems a process worthy of compression.
  - rbanffy 8y ago
    Isn't it compressing caches only?
bpicolo 8y ago
Probably would help if they freed up space and battery life by not having a totally unnecessary second screen taking up the top row of the keyboard.
- donarb 8y ago
  And replace it with what, function keys? Keys which are thicker than the screen that replaced them and has far more functionality in a smaller footprint?

roadnottaken 8y ago

For what it's worth, the keyboard and trackpad both keep breaking on my XPS 15 :/

m_st 8y ago
My trackpad broke too, because the battery was inflating and pushed it out of the case... Got a free replacement though.

csomar 8y ago

The reason I'm sticking to the Macbook is that despite these issues they are still way ahead of any competition. I'm running a mid-2014 retina. It is still way better than anything Dell, Lenovo, Asus, etc.. can get me. 4 years later and the battery still get me a solid 5-6 hours despite strong usage. But here is the following: Apple is really improving. It is just not meeting the expectations of its demanding users (and rightly so since we are paying a premium for Apple hardware). I remember getting sick of macOS Sierra and decided to rollback to Mavericks. Holly crap, I then just realized how much more polished Sierra is with all its issues. The external screen resolutions were screwed, can no longer answer calls through my mac, notes no longer sync and a dozen other things that I just "assumed". These advances are probably building technical debt. But also they are what attaching people to the Apple ecosystem. I get my airpods connected to my iPhone easily and without issues. Then I quickly switch the input to my Mac. Then back to my iPhone. Good luck getting that to work correctly on Windows software and other hardware.

acranox 8y ago

Did you buy your previous MBPs because they are nice kit, or because of Mac OS X? Are you switching to a Dell, or switching to Windows or Linux? If your work or personal use can so freely change Operating Systems, then, I guess I consider you lucky. I can't really do my job from a Windows box without significant pain. I could probably use Linux, but it would add some additional frustration.